We have joined the club of people who have too many PCs but refuse to put them in the dumpster bandwagon. .. my PCs join my collection of mobile phones except that it's rather difficult to hang them up on the wall, within a nice frame.
What to do with the old PCs?
The first one, a Pentium (R) with 90MHz processor and 32mb RAM I got when we first came to Australia.
The second one I picked up from the nature strip last hardware disposal day. I also picked up a monitor and a keyboard.
To plan for a super computer, I bought a used monitor and another keyboard for $8 at this PC shop in Vermont South
So I really don't have an excuse not to get them going.
PC II has 2 hard drives and I fiddled so much with the BIOS, the system won't recognise an operating system. Someone left an essay on the Korean War in the pickedup PC. That's at least worth something, and reason enough to revive the HDD.
To be continued.
17 May 2007, Thursday
OK, continued. Yay. I got it running. Here's the story.
My old PC (OPC) has only 75MHZ and 24MB Ram. It has a Gigabyte GA 586AP Award Modular Bios v4.50G. Bios ID: 2A5KBG02-00 Chipset ALi 1449/51/61
So what I did was dug around and found the SIMM ram and plonked them on. Now it's a whopper - nearly 90MB Ram.
Then I decided to plonk in the Ethernet Card Intel Pro 100S - but then I'd have to run a cable from the router to the PC which meant I would need at least 20m of RJ45 cable. Off I went yesterday to Carribbean Gardens. The nice guy and I had a chat. He was selling a PCI USB 2(2 port) card for $10 whereas a 20m CAT5e would cost me $12. I got thinking. I got the card.
Last night, fiddled around for awhile reading up about USB for Windows 95.
I must express thanks to www.usbman.com - lots of insights about installing USB drives on that old OS. http://www.usbman.com/Win95%20USB%20Guide.htm
First thing: make sure your version of windows can take USB. Minimum Windows95B or specifcially 4.00.950B (4.03.1212.1214).
First thing, I was advised: flash bios. Bios is too old probably to be upgraded. I thought about it all the while. Got sidetracked. Most advice is to go on Windows98, but try finding that OS. Then I tried the other Linux distros. Even my ancient can't accept Linux. Sighed. Went ahead anyway. Took the advice, and downloaded the following files: install the USBSUPP.exe file first, reboot and install the other. Don't worry if windows has a question mark next to some devices.
USBSUPP.zip
USBUPD2.zip
Those two files will get Windows 95 to recognise the USB controller. Next, to get it to recognise Flash drives, you have to install this file:
w95usbflash11.zip
from this site: http://toastytech.com/files/cruzerwin95.html
as directed by Annoyances. org
zing. I am on usb. Only problem, it doesn't have that thing on the tool bar that allows me to stop the usb device. Just have to pull it out or shut down.
Objective:
Install extra hard disk from PC (2) and try out my Linksys Wireless Adapter (USB).
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